MEET THE DESIGNER: STEVEN SHEIN

“I was working on an art project about the body’s engagement with the environment when an instructor suggested I make something wearable.”
Steven SheinSHOP ALL

Long before Steven Shein, who describes himself as “being way more interested in style than fashion,” got into jewelry and furniture design, he was a Lego-playing, tree-climbing eight-year old in South Africa. Hold down the fast-forward button for a bit and you’ll whiz past Steven moving to CA with his family, enrolling at University of California in Santa Barbara for philosophy at 18, discovering contemporary art, and switching his major to sculpture. Press pause.
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Long before Steven Shein, who describes himself as “being way more interested in style than fashion,” got into jewelry and furniture design, he was a Lego-playing, tree-climbing eight-year old in South Africa. Hold down the fast-forward button for a bit and you’ll whiz past Steven moving to CA with his family, enrolling at University of California in Santa Barbara for philosophy at 18, discovering contemporary art, and switching his major to sculpture. Press pause.“It was all an accident,” Steven explains of his road to jewelry design. “I was working on an art project that dealt with the body’s engagement with the environment when an instructor suggested I make something wearable. So I made a big, blocky bangle. That was the starting point.”At 22, Steven moved to Los Angeles and headed to the Art Center to pursue environmental design, where he stumbled across laser-cutting technology and started getting busy with plexiglass. And while alternative materials drew him in, since launching his namesake line in late 2012, Steven has embraced using go-to metals—bronze, silver, and gold—in less-than-classical ways. “Lately, I’ve been playing with sandblasting and have been juxtaposing that against high-polish surfaces,” he says. Yes, the outcome is as cool as it sounds. —alisha prakash